Document-sharing extension for Firefox now covers Chrome and appellate courts.

Aaron Swartz is remembered most for his campaign to liberate articles from the academic database JSTOR. That effort led to his indictment on federal hacking charges, which his family blamed for his January suicide. But years earlier, in 2008, Swartz liberated millions of documents from PACER, the paywalled website for federal court records.

In 2009, a group of researchers at Princeton created a Firefox extension called RECAP to help users redistribute PACER documents. (Disclosure: I was a RECAP co-creator but am no longer actively involved in the project.) Swartz's document liberation efforts were crucial to the success of RECAP because the RECAP team seeded its databases with the 2.7 million documents Swartz had downloaded.

A few days after Swartz's death, the entrepreneur Aaron Greenspan announced the Aaron Swartz Memorial Grants, two $5000 grants to improve RECAP. On Tuesday, the RECAP project announced the winners of two grants. One recipient ported the RECAP extension from Firefox to Chrome. The other extended RECAP to capture documents from the appellate courts as well as those at the trial court level.

Tear down this paywall

When the PACER website was created in the 1990s, it was a big step forward for public access to judicial records. Previously, users could only access information through a clunky dial-up service, or by physically traveling to the courthouse. But over the last decade, the PACER website has fallen farther and farther behind. As storage and bandwidth costs plummeted, the courts actually raised PACER fees from seven to 10 cents per page.

RECAP was intended to save users money while also illustrating the absurdity of charging so much money for access to public documents. When a user browses PACER, RECAP automatically notifies the user if the document she wants is already available for free online. RECAP also automatically sends copies of documents the user purchases to an online archive so they can later be shared with other users. The archive is hosted free of charge by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization based in California.

RECAP has become widely used by journalists, academics, and online activists. Ars reporters are heavy PACER users, as are the anti-troll activists who have dogged organizations like Prenda Law. One anti-troll activist told us he spends about $50 a month on PACER, a number that would presumably be even higher without RECAP.

Until Tuesday, RECAP was a Firefox-only project. Now a Chrome version has been developed by Ka-Ping Yee, an engineer at Google.org.

"Aaron was a friend, and I was powerfully affected by his passing," Yee said in a statement released by the RECAP team. "His life’s work embodied many of the ideals I have long supported. I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t done much to further these causes, and the grants gave me the opportunity to turn a time of great sadness into a useful contribution."

Yee says he will give his $5000 award to GiveWell, a charity promoted by Aaron Swartz.

The extension of RECAP to the appellate courts was accomplished by a pair of Italians, high school student Filippo Valsorda and graduate student Alessio Palmero Aprosio.

"While working on the project, we got a feel of how the PACER system is unjust and broken," Valsorda said on the RECAP website. "We were fool enough to make a search for 'Smith' and got billed $25 without any warning."

Steve Schultze, the Princeton researcher who runs RECAP, says he's still looking for ideas to improve the project. Google has pledged two $5,000 prizes for proposals to improve the system. Schultze told us that the cash is still up for grabs.

Promoted Comments

To be clear for those who don't know; all the documents in PACER are part of the public record and it is perfectly legal to redistribute them. There is not copyright issue here. PACER is charging for the service of hosting/searching for those files, and it has had a defacto (atleast) monopoly in doing so, allowing it to charge much higher prices that is necessary or fair. RECAP is providing a competing service performing the same task for free.

Timothy B. Lee
Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times. Emailtimothy.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@binarybits

48 Reader Comments

To be clear for those who don't know; all the documents in PACER are part of the public record and it is perfectly legal to redistribute them. There is not copyright issue here. PACER is charging for the service of hosting/searching for those files, and it has had a defacto (atleast) monopoly in doing so, allowing it to charge much higher prices that is necessary or fair. RECAP is providing a competing service performing the same task for free.

Of course, the unstated fact is that if it hadn't been for Aaron Swartz, the PACER project to extend free access to their database would have been expanded to thousands of public libraries, and possibly further.

To be clear for those who don't know; all the documents in PACER are part of the public record and it is perfectly legal to redistribute them. There is not copyright issue here. PACER is charging for the service of hosting/searching for those files, and it has had a defacto (atleast) monopoly in doing so, allowing it to charge much higher prices that is necessary or fair. RECAP is providing a competing service performing the same task for free.

Of course, the unstated fact is that if it hadn't been for Aaron Swartz, the PACER project to extend free access to their database would have been expanded to thousands of public libraries, and possibly further.

Or they could have, you know, just made the whole thing free and open right there and then (or earlier).

Or they could have, you know, just made the whole thing free and open right there and then (or earlier).

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

Or they could have, you know, just made the whole thing free and open right there and then (or earlier).

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

The production of legal records is not a service that the court provides to people. It's an integral part of understanding the legal system that binds all of us. It should be free for the same reason the courts don't charge admission to the courthouse.

Many of the people who access court records are doing so for reasons that don't primarily benefit themselves. Reporters are an example of this. Obviously, we hope to make a profit from our coverage of legal cases, but there's a broader public benefit to thorough coverage of the judicial branch. To the extent that PACER fees make it impractical to do thorough research, the primary harm falls not on us as reporters but on the general public who becomes less well-informed about the judicial process.

Also, PACER fees are wildly disproportionate. The courts' transparency leaves a lot to be desired, but roughly speaking running a system like PACER shouldn't cost more than ~$10 million, and arguably much less. Yet the courts take in around $100 million per year. That money goes into a slush fund that's used to pay for other IT projects that have nothing to do with the PACER website.

In my view, PACER documents should be available for free on the web the same as other public records. The ~$10 million cost would require a tiny increase in the courts' budget. But at a minimum, PACER fees should be cut by ~90 percent to reflect the true costs of running the PACER system.

Just another sign the leaking of documents is probably only accelerating

This has nothing to do with leaking anything.

These documents have been public record forever, for anyone who had the means to go to the courthouse and look them up. The "information wants to be free" crowd forgets that that it takes time and money to scan all these hard copies into files. Or to link an e-document submission system to a web front end.

In my view, PACER documents should be available for free on the web the same as other public records. The ~$10 million cost would require a tiny increase in the courts' budget. But at a minimum, PACER fees should be cut by ~90 percent to reflect the true costs of running the PACER system.

The other $90 million doesn't suddenly disappear. Those funds need to be made up somewhere, also. Personally, I'd prefer free documents and slightly higher taxes, but lets please not pretend we can just wish away expenses.

Or they could have, you know, just made the whole thing free and open right there and then (or earlier).

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

The production of legal records is not a service that the court provides to people. It's an integral part of understanding the legal system that binds all of us. It should be free for the same reason the courts don't charge admission to the courthouse.

Only in a fantasy rainbow world can this be free. In the real world it is paid for by tax dollars (and to a lesser extent, by fees such as those from PACER).

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Many of the people who access court records are doing so for reasons that don't primarily benefit themselves. Reporters are an example of this. Obviously, we hope to make a profit from our coverage of legal cases, but there's a broader public benefit to thorough coverage of the judicial branch. To the extent that PACER fees make it impractical to do thorough research, the primary harm falls not on us as reporters but on the general public who becomes less well-informed about the judicial process.

As I said, the alternative is for the general public to pay more in taxes in order to support the parts of the court system that are currently paid for by fees (such as those for PACER, and many other sorts of court services). This is a perfectly reasonable position, but you need to state it honestly. You need to note that real work by real people at real courthouses has real costs associated with it, and your preference is that all those costs be paid for by taxes on the general public rather than a mix of taxes and fees for those who actually use particular services.

The problem with your article is that it seems to reiterate the naive view of those like Swartz, that if the end product is essentially free to re-distribute electronically, then that product itself is free. But, in the real world, this is far from true. PACER costs a lot of real money to produce (and similarly JSTOR etc). That money has to be paid somehow, or the product simply will not exist. PACER fees are one possible "business model" for creating such a system. Higher taxes are another possibility. But you have to choose a funding source. The product is not free, regardless of whether its re-distribution is nearly so.

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Also, PACER fees are wildly disproportionate. The courts' transparency leaves a lot to be desired, but roughly speaking running a system like PACER shouldn't cost more than ~$10 million, and arguably much less. Yet the courts take in around $100 million per year. That money goes into a slush fund that's used to pay for other IT projects that have nothing to do with the PACER website.

Now you seem to be arguing for more equitable PACER fees, rather than for "free" as above. Sure, PACER is far from perfect, and its fee structure is far from perfect. But that doesn't change the underlying fact that if you take PACER fees away from the courts, you have to either cancel all the projects that those fees fund (including PACER itself) or find another source of revenue, either higher taxes or other sorts of fees.

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In my view, PACER documents should be available for free on the web the same as other public records.

Your birth certificate is a public record (if you were born in the USA). Would you like this to be freely available in an open access, easily searchable form, on the web?

There can be unintended consequences. The reality is that the internet has changed a great deal what it means for a record to be made public. It enables classes of fraud (eg mass scale identity theft) which simply weren't possible when one had to physically walk to the courthouse and pay photocopy fees to access public records.

There are a lot of challenging, practical questions to be dealt with here that require real thought. And ideologies such as "everything should be free" are mere excuses not to do the thinking - they are not answers to anything practical.

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The ~$10 million cost would require a tiny increase in the courts' budget. But at a minimum, PACER fees should be cut by ~90 percent to reflect the true costs of running the PACER system.

So you're willing to pay the difference, then? Or round up a group of charitable contributors to cover these costs every year in perpetuity?

I think the author and his band of Robinhoodesqe Merry Men should work with PACER to find a stable funding source to allow free access to documents rather than hack into a government database and take them without permission and become felons in the process.

As another poster noted, PACER fees help the federal judiciary function, especially in light of constant attacks on the court system's budget. The money lost isn't just going to magically appear.

Since people seem to confused about this, I'll state it clearly: the ~$100 million the judiciary currently gets in PACER fees should be replaced by general tax revenues. It's no more appropriate to charge for public court records than it would be appropriate for Congress to charge for THOMAS or executive branch agencies like the BLS or SEC to charge for data generated with taxpayer dollars.

As another poster noted, PACER fees help the federal judiciary function, especially in light of constant attacks on the court system's budget. The money lost isn't just going to magically appear.

Sticking public information behind a paywall is not an acceptable revenue stream in a democratic society.

The court records will exist whether PACER does or not, if they don't want to fund it with tax dollars then they should just send copies of everything to companies that would love to host it, like Google and the Internet Archive.

Or they could have, you know, just made the whole thing free and open right there and then (or earlier).

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

Who said anything about a free lunch? But seeing as open access to documents generated by processes already paid for by our tax dollars is a public good, I don't see why tax dollars shouldn't go toward maintaining PACER as a free and open database. Probably wouldn't cost more than, say, a new fighter jet. Or a couple of tanks. And to be quite honest, it would do a lot more societal good to enable more people to be versed in the laws that govern us. So yeah, I have no problem with raising a probably tiny amount of extra revenue to pay for this, or shifting around some of the money that's already there.

The production of legal records is not a service that the court provides to people.

I 100% disagree. The federal judiciary is charged by Congress with keeping the official court records and documents.

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It's an integral part of understanding the legal system that binds all of us. It should be free for the same reason the courts don't charge admission to the courthouse.

"Should be free" is a matter of opinion, and one many do not share.

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Many of the people who access court records are doing so for reasons that don't primarily benefit themselves. Reporters are an example of this. Obviously, we hope to make a profit from our coverage of legal cases, but there's a broader public benefit to thorough coverage of the judicial branch. To the extent that PACER fees make it impractical to do thorough research, the primary harm falls not on us as reporters but on the general public who becomes less well-informed about the judicial process.

So basically, you intend to profit from using court records, but you have no desire to pay for the costs of obtaining the documents.

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Also, PACER fees are wildly disproportionate.

The court system caps charges at the first 20 pages. You can download a 200 page filing and only pay for the first 20 pages. That is not wildly disproportionate.

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The courts' transparency leaves a lot to be desired, but roughly speaking running a system like PACER shouldn't cost more than ~$10 million, and arguably much less. Yet the courts take in around $100 million per year. That money goes into a slush fund that's used to pay for other IT projects that have nothing to do with the PACER website.

The purported slush fund you speak of has allowed the courts to enter the 21st Century, go largely paperless, and provide GREATER and EASIER access to court records to the general public than before. Prior to PACER, one had to hire someone to physically go to the courthouse and physically copy filings. Now, any member the public can access any non-sealed court document nationwide through PACER. That simply wasn't possible 15-20 years ago. Moreover, going paperless has reduced costs in other areas and made the courts more environmentally friendly (less paper used, less copiers/printers/toners, less physical storage space.

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In my view, PACER documents should be available for free on the web the same as other public records. The ~$10 million cost would require a tiny increase in the courts' budget. But at a minimum, PACER fees should be cut by ~90 percent to reflect the true costs of running the PACER system.

If you truly believe the annual cost to be only $10 million, then be a true hero and spearhead an effort to find a sustainable way to fund the annual $10 million cost. I sympathize with the theme of free access to court records, but you have to see the big picture and apply a healthy dose of pragmatism to that ideal.

Since people seem to confused about this, I'll state it clearly: the ~$100 million the judiciary currently gets in PACER fees should be replaced by general tax revenues. It's no more appropriate to charge for public court records than it would be appropriate for Congress to charge for THOMAS or executive branch agencies like the BLS or SEC to charge for data generated with taxpayer dollars.

Congress allows PACER to charge fees because Congress also starves the judiciary of revenue necessary to properly run. Therefore, your beef is with Congress, not the judiciary. Work with Congress and/or PACER instead of hacking into a database without permission.

I think the author and his band of Robinhoodesqe Merry Men should work with PACER to find a stable funding source to allow free access to documents rather than hack into a government database and take them without permission and become felons in the process.

Hacking? Felons? Are you talking about RECAP or something else? I'm confused.

The legal data in PACER is copyright free. As far as I know, nobody is hacking into PACER to get it.

As I understand it, RECAP is making available copies after someone has paid PACER for the documents and they have been sent to RECAP. In this way subsequent PACER users who look for the same document can get it free from RECAP rather than pay PACER for it. There's nothing illegal going on here.

I rather like your Robinhoodesqe comment - but sadly nobody is taking anything from the rich to give to the poor. All that is happening is that PACER is not being paid multiple times for delivering one document to several people. Frankly, 10 cents a page is extortionate given that most legal documents are double spaced which makes their page count much higher than necessary.

Yes! If there's anything we can do to reduce the horrible financial burden on the country's law firms that PACER fees represent, I'm all for it. Why should the attorneys be forced to bear the cost of doing attorney-type business when those costs can be spread more equitably amongst the taxpayers?

I think the author and his band of Robinhoodesqe Merry Men should work with PACER to find a stable funding source to allow free access to documents rather than hack into a government database and take them without permission and become felons in the process.

Just didn't feel like doing that whole "reading the article" thing today, huh?

Since people seem to confused about this, I'll state it clearly: the ~$100 million the judiciary currently gets in PACER fees should be replaced by general tax revenues. It's no more appropriate to charge for public court records than it would be appropriate for Congress to charge for THOMAS or executive branch agencies like the BLS or SEC to charge for data generated with taxpayer dollars.

Thanks for the clarification. I should probably also clarify that, for the most part, I agree. I just think it's very important to emphasize the real costs and real choices involved here (it's a question of who pays the costs, not whether or not costs exist).

I do think there are a couple important caveats to consider:1) Some kind of very minimal barrier to entry (eg a very small fee, or a restriction on the number of documents that can be downloaded for free) for public records, provided it is kept reasonably low (and gotten rid of entirely for legitimate projects such as academic research) may potentially be useful to mitigate use of public records for fraudulent purposes, such as identity theft.2) There is the reality that in many parts of the US, raising taxes for anything, even by a small amount, can be practically impossible. Hence funding things (like PACER) with tax revenue that were formerly funded with fees often means cutting other essential gov't services instead. So, while I agree it would be ideal for PACER to be largely funded by tax dollars, I don't necessarily agree that doing so is more important than, for example, public libraries or public parks.

Yes! If there's anything we can do to reduce the horrible financial burden on the country's law firms that PACER fees represent, I'm all for it. Why should the attorneys be forced to bear the cost of doing attorney-type business when those costs can be spread more equitably amongst the taxpayers?

I highly suspect that law firms build PACER costs into the fees they charge clients, so my guess is they probably don't care that much one way or another about whether PACER charges for access. In fact, it's the layperson who is getting screwed out of access to court documents by PACER's charges. (And yes, folks technically have access, if they can afford it. But most folks just don't have the money to make extensive use of PACER.)

It's even possible to argue that turning PACER into a free database works against the interests of established law firms, since it holds the possibility of making the law just a little less arcane to the average citizen. More public access to these documents, in other words, might just make some folks that much less dependent on the services of a lawyer. Now, you can argue the good and bad of this (a little info can be dangerous and all that), but I don't really think there's a lawyer's lobby knocking down the doors of Congress to try to make these documents free.

Or they could have, you know, just made the whole thing free and open right there and then (or earlier).

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

How about we do (1)? Having a paywall between the people and public records doesn't sit right with me by any stretch.

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

How you, or anyone, can justify charging an access fee for something that we already paid to have created is beyond me. Since the public is already paying for these services they should not be charged to access them.

Yes! If there's anything we can do to reduce the horrible financial burden on the country's law firms that PACER fees represent, I'm all for it. Why should the attorneys be forced to bear the cost of doing attorney-type business when those costs can be spread more equitably amongst the taxpayers?

I highly suspect that law firms build PACER costs into the fees they charge clients, so my guess is they probably don't care that much one way or another about whether PACER charges for access. In fact, it's the layperson who is getting screwed out of access to court documents by PACER's charges. (And yes, folks technically have access, if they can afford it. But most folks just don't have the money to make extensive use of PACER.)

It's even possible to argue that turning PACER into a free database works against the interests of established law firms, since it holds the possibility of making the law just a little less arcane to the average citizen. More public access to these documents, in other words, might just make some folks that much less dependent on the services of a lawyer. Now, you can argue the good and bad of this (a little info can be dangerous and all that), but I don't really think there's a lawyer's lobby knocking down the doors of Congress to try to make these documents free.

Of course they bill those costs back to the client, and whether or not they care is not something I give a lot of thought to. My point is that the PACER system is less of a "public good" than is, say, the National Park System. I know a lot a lot more campers than I do lawyers, but people's experience differs in this regard.

Given that many "public goods" such as parks, libraries, public pools, public golf courses, public airports, etc, all are subsidized by tax dollars and ALL have some sort of user fee associated with them, why should PACER be any different? I would argue that it's even LESS defensible as a public good given the narrowly focused and financially capable constituency that it serves.

So your argument is that there are a wealth of individuals out there without the means to pay PACER fees, without the means to hire an attorney, but yet have the means to access the database, make sense of its content, and put that content to some useful purpose? I'm sorry, but I doubt this.

The maintenance and distribution of court records, including electronic records, is most certainly not free. It requires constant work every day by large numbers of people at courthouses all over the country. The court system is not free, it is paid for by our tax dollars. PACER fees are a way of distributing some of the costs of maintaining court records preferentially to those who actually use these records. If these fees are not charged, the alternatives are (1) raise more tax revenue to cover the costs formerly covered by PACER fees, or (2) get rid of PACER and scale back availability of court records. If you don't like PACER fees, you can choose 1 or 2. You don't get a free lunch.

How you, or anyone, can justify charging an access fee for something that we already paid to have created is beyond me.

Can you please quote the part where I justify a fee? I simply point out that the fee is currently the way in which the revenue is generated to allow PACER to exist. If you don't want the fee, you have to find another source of funding (eg taxes).

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Since the public is already paying for these services they should not be charged to access them.

The public is currently not paying the ~$100M/yr portion of the costs that PACER fees are covering. If PACER fees are eliminated, the public will have to pay more. I agree with you that it is preferable to have these costs mostly covered by taxes, but doing so in practice is a difficult thing indeed.

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The only "free lunch" being had is by those that run the system.

This makes no sense. PACER fees go toward paying the costs of the court system (and taxes, as well as other sorts of fees, pay the rest). No one's pocketing those fees and getting rich off of it.

Except many of the documents are not something we have "already paid to have created" - many, if not the majority of the files are created by private parties to civil suits, defendants, et al.

Tim - is there a breakout of the $10m in costs vs. the $100m revenue? Is the difference going for other court technology modernization projects? Digitizing old physical records that predate the e-submission? I think there are a number of hidden costs that any difference in the cost (bandwidth/storage) could legitimately cover - e.g. redaction of personal information from records, compliance with new privacy regulations, transforming older file formats to modern open ones.

Yes, there is tension between the sunshine and legitimate privacy and security concerns and the extremes on either side don't get that. And maybe that is healthy.

And if anyone want an area to truly reform a more egregious case of paywalls and public access - please work on the International Building Code copyrighted building code. More and more municipalities/states are adopting the IBC code as law, making it required for citizens to know to follow. However, the updated code is only made available in copyrighted forms that are quite expensive. As a matter of practice and ruling, "the law" is not normally copyrightable and it would beneficial to have the code in accessible form for the public nationwide (as well as in the US 5th Circuit, where there has been a ruling to back this).

Yes! If there's anything we can do to reduce the horrible financial burden on the country's law firms that PACER fees represent, I'm all for it. Why should the attorneys be forced to bear the cost of doing attorney-type business when those costs can be spread more equitably amongst the taxpayers?

I highly suspect that law firms build PACER costs into the fees they charge clients, so my guess is they probably don't care that much one way or another about whether PACER charges for access. In fact, it's the layperson who is getting screwed out of access to court documents by PACER's charges. (And yes, folks technically have access, if they can afford it. But most folks just don't have the money to make extensive use of PACER.)

It's even possible to argue that turning PACER into a free database works against the interests of established law firms, since it holds the possibility of making the law just a little less arcane to the average citizen. More public access to these documents, in other words, might just make some folks that much less dependent on the services of a lawyer. Now, you can argue the good and bad of this (a little info can be dangerous and all that), but I don't really think there's a lawyer's lobby knocking down the doors of Congress to try to make these documents free.

Of course they bill those costs back to the client, and whether or not they care is not something I give a lot of thought to. My point is that the PACER system is less of a "public good" than is, say, the National Park System. I know a lot a lot more campers than I do lawyers, but people's experience differs in this regard.

Given that many "public goods" such as parks, libraries, public pools, public golf courses, public airports, etc, all are subsidized by tax dollars and ALL have some sort of user fee associated with them, why should PACER be any different? I would argue that it's even LESS defensible as a public good given the narrowly focused and financially capable constituency that it serves.

So your argument is that there are a wealth of individuals out there without the means to pay PACER fees, without the means to hire an attorney, but yet have the means to access the database, make sense of its content, and put that content to some useful purpose? I'm sorry, but I doubt this.

Edit: Gratuitous final comment deleted by author.

So first, let me be clear: are you now disavowing your initial snark about lawyers bearing the costs of PACER? Look, I'm no particular friend of lawyers as a class (nor a particular enemy), but it seems we both agree that PACER isn't exactly taking any substantial amount of money out of their pockets. So maybe we put that initial post to rest?

In terms of how much of a "public good" the decisions of one of the three branches of our government are, I'd say they very much are. Part of this is about enabling higher levels of civic engagement. Which goes to the heart of democratic governance. As far as user fees for just about all the services you mentioned, you are there dealing with inherently limited goods (finite spaces, finite numbers of books, finite numbers of tee times, etc.), and the fees can be seen as regulating use. In terms of the digital data that has already been generated for PACER, the inherent supply limits are extremely small, basically relating to server space and bandwidth, both of which are relatively cheap and are a lot more expandable than park lands.

Part of my argument was that by eliminating user fees for PACER, you would dramatically widen its constituency of users who DON'T currently have access because of the system's very high fees. For instance, students. Jailhouse lawyers. The vast majority of people in this country who have computers and some form of internet connection.

Just because folks don't necessarily have an idea of how they would use or parse the information in PACER at this point doesn't mean it couldn't be put to highly productive use for the educated layperson. Navigation used to be the purview of trained specialists, but the opening up of cartographic and GIS data has led to location-based services that were only conceived of once that data became publicly available. While I wouldn't pretend to simplistically equate law documents with GPS, the point I am trying to make is that you just don't know what sorts of new engagement might arise when this information is made more accessible to everyone.

Yes! If there's anything we can do to reduce the horrible financial burden on the country's law firms that PACER fees represent, I'm all for it. Why should the attorneys be forced to bear the cost of doing attorney-type business when those costs can be spread more equitably amongst the taxpayers?

I highly suspect that law firms build PACER costs into the fees they charge clients, so my guess is they probably don't care that much one way or another about whether PACER charges for access. In fact, it's the layperson who is getting screwed out of access to court documents by PACER's charges. (And yes, folks technically have access, if they can afford it. But most folks just don't have the money to make extensive use of PACER.)

It's even possible to argue that turning PACER into a free database works against the interests of established law firms, since it holds the possibility of making the law just a little less arcane to the average citizen. More public access to these documents, in other words, might just make some folks that much less dependent on the services of a lawyer. Now, you can argue the good and bad of this (a little info can be dangerous and all that), but I don't really think there's a lawyer's lobby knocking down the doors of Congress to try to make these documents free.

Of course they bill those costs back to the client, and whether or not they care is not something I give a lot of thought to. My point is that the PACER system is less of a "public good" than is, say, the National Park System. I know a lot a lot more campers than I do lawyers, but people's experience differs in this regard.

Given that many "public goods" such as parks, libraries, public pools, public golf courses, public airports, etc, all are subsidized by tax dollars and ALL have some sort of user fee associated with them, why should PACER be any different? I would argue that it's even LESS defensible as a public good given the narrowly focused and financially capable constituency that it serves.

So your argument is that there are a wealth of individuals out there without the means to pay PACER fees, without the means to hire an attorney, but yet have the means to access the database, make sense of its content, and put that content to some useful purpose? I'm sorry, but I doubt this.

Edit: Gratuitous final comment deleted by author.

So first, let me be clear: are you now disavowing your initial snark about lawyers bearing the costs of PACER? Look, I'm no particular friend of lawyers as a class (nor a particular enemy), but it seems we both agree that PACER isn't exactly taking any substantial amount of money out of their pockets. So maybe we put that initial post to rest?

I am in no way disavowing my earlier snark. The legal profession is by far the largest user of PACER data. They are also the only GENERATOR of PACER data. They derive, by far, the greatest benefit from access to PACER data. So why should they (or their clients) not pay for access to this data? It is the legal profession's rice bowl - why should the public pay for it's maintenance through taxes?

I think maybe you and I have talking across one another regarding the costs of maintaining the system versus the fees associated with accessing the data. My first (and larger, however snarky) point was that the general public need not subsidize the legal profession by removing access fees to PACER, as those access fees are used to maintain a system that financially benefits one class of people - the legal profession. Let those who get the benefit pay for the costs to provide it.

Is there a more equitable method of distributing the costs? Sure. Why not let the legal practices that use the system for profit continue to pay their full fees while amateurs get cheap access? Works for me, and it sounds like it would work for you too.

On the second point, if your assertion is that there is a bonanza of useful information buried deep in legal proceedings just waiting to be discovered ... well, I'm not optimistic. If I knew you better I'd try to convince you that ninety-nine point nine nine percent of it is procedural boilerplate based on legal precedent that's existed for many many years. Since I don't know you I'll just tell you that this is what I've observed.

To be clear for those who don't know; all the documents in PACER are part of the public record and it is perfectly legal to redistribute them. There is not copyright issue here. PACER is charging for the service of hosting/searching for those files, and it has had a defacto (atleast) monopoly in doing so, allowing it to charge much higher prices that is necessary or fair. RECAP is providing a competing service performing the same task for free.

The irony being that PACER was debating going free several years ago, but Swartz going insane and attacking the servers by trying to rapidly download every document off of the entire thing made them shut down the free access program.

Unless otherwise classified or legally prohibited, all government documents and records should be available for free; never behind a paywall on the Internet. Granted the direct usability of these records may be difficult - some Federal agencies actually dump their database files for download.

A point about copyright, every Federal government document I have seen is public domain. I believe this is by statute. Once you have a copy of the document you can freely use it.

Since people seem to confused about this, I'll state it clearly: the ~$100 million the judiciary currently gets in PACER fees should be replaced by general tax revenues. It's no more appropriate to charge for public court records than it would be appropriate for Congress to charge for THOMAS or executive branch agencies like the BLS or SEC to charge for data generated with taxpayer dollars.

So the general public should fund a system that gets 95+ % of it's use by people in the top 10% income bracket. Sounds about as dumb as grants for $20-60k solar panel systems for the uppity and selfish.

How about make public access to PACER funded by state bar or similar fees charged of practicing lawyers in a given jurisdiction. Then let Google index and/or store all of it.

Also, get some ethics Tim. The $10 mil number is made up. It could be under $1 mil, or nearer $50 mil. I do know that when it comes to government IT development, the cost is roughly on the order of 10x what it would cost to do the exact same thing commercially due to the U.S. government's requirements (I can say this from having written estimates and had government IT work farmed to me).

So yes, $10 mil is made up, it's more than double that. Sure, a far cry from the ~$110 mil in revenue, but still, a little bit of Google and you could have stated ethically, the cost. Also, note the rising cost and leveling revenue surplus. They have been talking reducing fees.

If anyone had access to PACER, I could see access from search engines, journalists, students, and the curious taking their costs substantially up. More access = more servers, more caching and multihoming, more logging and auditing, and LOTS more electricity and bandwidth.

Except many of the documents are not something we have "already paid to have created" - many, if not the majority of the files are created by private parties to civil suits, defendants, et al.

Tim - is there a breakout of the $10m in costs vs. the $100m revenue? Is the difference going for other court technology modernization projects? Digitizing old physical records that predate the e-submission? I think there are a number of hidden costs that any difference in the cost (bandwidth/storage) could legitimately cover - e.g. redaction of personal information from records, compliance with new privacy regulations, transforming older file formats to modern open ones.

Yes, there is tension between the sunshine and legitimate privacy and security concerns and the extremes on either side don't get that. And maybe that is healthy.

And if anyone want an area to truly reform a more egregious case of paywalls and public access - please work on the International Building Code copyrighted building code. More and more municipalities/states are adopting the IBC code as law, making it required for citizens to know to follow. However, the updated code is only made available in copyrighted forms that are quite expensive. As a matter of practice and ruling, "the law" is not normally copyrightable and it would beneficial to have the code in accessible form for the public nationwide (as well as in the US 5th Circuit, where there has been a ruling to back this).

The judiciary's reported cost for "public access services and applications" in 2012 was $21.9 million, while total revenues were $120 million. That's an upper bound, since it's not clear what they count as "public access services and applications." The other $100 million goes to a variety of judicial IT categories such as CM/ECF (the judiciary's e-filing system), "telecommunications," "courtroom technology allotments for maintenance/technology refreshments," and so forth. So the costs may be higher than $10 million, but they're clearly much less than the $120 million the courts are collecting, with the rest going to random judicial IT expenses.

Also, I suspect the paywall contributes a significant amount to the costs. Having a paywall means they need infrastructure to collect and store credit card numbers, deal with collections, take customer support calls, etc. Get rid of the paywall, and those costs would go away with it.